As a man of science, it is my lot to investigate and understand the incomprehensible and the unimaginable. For my latest scientific endeavor, therefore, I took upon myself the epistemic cross of being the first to carefully study, and therefore to truly understand, one of nature’s most mysterious, stupefying, and confusing abominations: visible light! For ease of comprehension, I have separated my findings into three sections. Section 1: Light! Are you a Particle, or a Wave? Decide! Decide, or Perish in the Flames! Section 2: I Do Not Understand, Nor Do I Trust, Rainbows! Section 3: Light Must be Stopped! But How?!?
And so, without further exposition, I am pleased to present part I of my scientific trilogy.
1: Light: Are you a Particle, or a Wave? Decide! Decide, or Perish in the Flames!
The first step toward understanding the nature and the potential threat of light was to discover what it is. And the first step to discovering what light is, I soon found, was to determine what it is made of. I came upon the realization that it was not readily clear what state of matter light was- that is to say, is it liquid, solid, gas, mineral, animal, or vegetable?- while I was attempting to collect samples of it for my study. It seemed no matter what method I used, I could not actually capture light in any sort of container. I first attempted to scoop light out of a lamp with a spoon, but my efforts were unsuccessful. I knew, then, that it was not a liquid. I attempted to break a chunk of light off with a hammer; again, I found this to be wildly ineffective. Light is not a solid; my lamp, however, apparently is. And so on went a barrage of scientific tests- attempts to vacuum light up, to cage it like a dog, to fill a bowl with it, to grow it in a flower pot in my closet, and a myriad of other scientific collection methods; all were utter failures. I finally reached a breakthrough in my studies when I attempted to catch light on its way out of a source. This was where the real menace of light came to be exposed to my sharp scientific mind.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, and I had grown weary of my attempts to knock light unconscious by slamming it against a wall as it escaped from a high-powered spotlight. My reasoning was that if I could force the light out of the spotlight at an incredibly high volume and velocity, it would be unable to redirect itself away from the wall in time to halt its momentum, and subsequently would be knocked unconscious. It did not work. At this point, I lost control of my emotions; I was overcome with frustration and desperation, and with them, the urge to hide my face in my shirt and pretend I was invisible. I sat in my cloth shell, weeping and shrieking, for the better part of an hour. At this point, I opened my tearful eyes and made a phenomenal discovery: the spotlight had been left on, and the light was seeping through my shirt! I could feel it burning my eyes as I stared into it through the porous light cotton! A breakthrough! I knew that this was the moment I had been waiting for. I immediately began calculations.
My reasoning began as such: Only two things in the universe are capable of travelling through cloth: bullets and water. Bullets go through cloth because they are very fast and can tear through the barrier. Water goes through cloth because it is very tiny and can move in between the woven strands of cotton. It was then that I realized the terrible truth: Light was very tiny, and very fast! Faster than a bullet! Tinier than water! If this were so (which it undoubtedly is,) then that meant that there was more light than we had ever imagined surrounding us at all times!
And this brings me to my first, and most frightening, point about the nature of light. You are undoubtedly thinking to yourself, ah, but Dr. Brimsby, if light is so small, how can it fill an entire world? You have just said, yourself, that it surrounds us at all times! It must be extremely large! Alas, but that you are not a scientist! Your brainpower is astounding! You must consider an occupational change! A man of your mind skills should not be wasting his potential doing that thing with which you occupy yourself daily, but should be here, with me, stopping the great menace of light from enacting its apocalyptic reign of terror upon us! You are, however, wrong! Terribly, terribly wrong!!! Imagine! If light is so tiny, yet somehow manages to fill the entire earth, then it stands to reason that, as a matter of fact, there must be billions of them! We are in grave danger of being overrun and outnumbered a trillion to one by light! And, even worse, if light is extremely fast, at any given moment we face the danger of evisceration at its hands; should light choose to attack us, we will not stand a chance! We will surely be torn to shreds as it travels past us and through us, tearing our skin to pieces in the same way a bullet or a train would!
With this realization, I had begun my real research: it was now my charge to discover a means by which light could be stopped!